


It's Just Me

by redonthefly



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 14:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 5,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1985634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redonthefly/pseuds/redonthefly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles and ficlets written for Tumblr's Anna Week. </p><p>Each chapter is a standalone, but they do work together, in a way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tiptoes

It’s just out of reach. Even on her toes, arm stretching: reach, reach, reach, it’s too far; the brass hook that holds her window closed is still too high. Anna considers this, hands planted firmly on her hips, toe tapping, giving it a look – if she can just get the latch open, she’s pretty sure it’ll be no problem to reach the enormous English yew just beyond.

The branches are sprawling, fingers creeping shade over the garden below, curling toward her west facing window and over the castle gates to the south. Can anyone blame her, come on really; putting her here in this room with the tree whispering to her at night – it’s practically an invitation, a challenge.

Anna squints against the afternoon sunshine, and her toe taps a little faster against the wood floor. Maybe if she stacks up her books…


	2. Mysteries

Sometimes Mother cries. She’ll smile too brightly at Anna in the hall, or pretend to need to fix her hair, or claim her watery eyes are from reading in the dark – maybe these those distractions worked when she was a little girl, but Anna is fully 11 now, and she knows.

On the days when Mother cries, Papa sits too stiffly at dinner and has an extra wrinkle between his eyebrows, and Elsa won’t eat at all – she pushes her food around for five minutes before escaping, claiming a headache, or a need to study.

No one expects her to notice – which is almost as maddening as the fact that they’re keeping secrets – but no one ever brings it up, and by the time she’s 12, Anna has given up trying to figure it out.


	3. Make Believe

The courtyard hasn’t been swept today, and the wind from yesterday’s storm scattered sticks and leaves and lots of dirt and gravel all over the paving stones – it’s a mess, but it’s perfect for make-believe.

Anna stalks squirrels in the garden: she’s wild thing, surrounded by beasts of all shapes and sizes (What’s that? A bear, a boar?) and fending for herself, with sword and a shield like the warrior maidens in Papa’s books.

How fierce they are, with their armor and mighty horses and surrounded by the cries of men (she’s not allowed to ride yet, but someday, someday she’ll have her own horse and gleaming leather saddle and the wind in her hair and the sun on her back). The tomes are so enormous she can barely lift them from the library shelves, lithographs bursting off the pages. Joan of Arc, larger than life.

Outside, woodland creatures transform into dragons.

Her sword is a stick (a particularly pointy one), her shield a square pillow made of shining grey satin (which looks definitely like the real thing) that she grips by the heavy silk tassel and she brandishes each at the squirrel. The menacing agent of evil flicks his tail and continues stuffing acorns into its cheeks.

“Take that! And that!”

It doesn’t move. (The impertinence. How dare it.)

“Away, foul beast! Be gone!”

“Princess Anna!” Gerda’s voice pierces the fantasy; the squirrel turns tail and sprints up a tree.

Her sword turns back into a stick, her shield a flimsy cushion and she’s just Anna, with muddy hands and dirty hose who will probably get in trouble for sneaking pillows outside.

“Get inside Anna, it’s going to rain, goodness knows what your mother will say…”

Following Gerda back inside, she glances over her shoulder. Beady eyes glare at her from under a branch. (Tomorrow the sun will be out, and Anna of Arendelle, fearsome warrior maiden of the North will ride again to have her revenge.)


	4. Chocolate

Their wedding cake is chocolate of course – a towering concoction of whipped cocoa cream and frosting roses and a rich glaze that oozes decadently over the tiers and across the silver platter.

It’s sitting in the far corner of the ballroom, taunting her.

Anna knew that their wedding would be a state affair: a pageant and ball and celebration as much for Arendelle as it is for her and Kristoff, but there really does seem to be an unnecessary amount of formality and ritual involved.

First, a public processional to the church. It takes two hours to go from the castle to the cathedral, which kills – let’s just get married already please.

The official ceremony, which includes a very long recitation of scripture, three different choral pieces and traditional vows (there’s a comforting weight and gravitas she finds in saying them, knowing they’ve been said so many times before, but Kristoff looks terrified right up until the kiss at the end; also, wow).

Next is the recognized signing of their marriage certificate, and subsequent arguing with the bishop (again, they’ve been over it already) about whether or not Olaf qualifies as an official witness. (He doesn’t actually, but signs his name anyway, very proudly, in the bottom corner of the license.)

Finally there’s the reception, which Anna very quickly realizes is a lot more receiving people and accepting their congratulations than dancing or eating. She doesn’t mind the talking and chatting (when has she ever), except that cake is in the corner and she’s absolutely starving.

“Hey,” Kristoff whispers, appearing at her elbow. “Holding up okay?”

“I should be asking you,” she replies, and smiles again at the glow that spills out of her heart whenever she looks at him, dressed in full tails and coifed hair that keeps falling back into his eyes: her husband, best day ever.

He grins. “I’m doing fine. I have to go back and finish explaining Sven to a duke, but I brought you these.” He pulls a knotted handkerchief out of his pocket and drops it into her hands, gives her a swift kiss on the cheek and a wink, then melts back into the crowd of swirling satin and silk.

Curious, she ducks behind the nearest pillar and unfolds the bundle.

Truffles.

Bless the man who brings you chocolate, she thinks, teeth sinking slowly into the first one. Better yet, marry him.


	5. Spring Green

Arendelle winters are long by nature: the mountains that curl around the fjord and bay glitter white with snow and ice from October to March. By the time spring arrives she’s bouncing off the walls, pushing up against the snow like a green thing herself, tender and stretching for the sun.

There’s something slightly ironic about the fact that she gets horribly sunburned on the first truly warm day of the year, and becomes an actual tender green thing; Gerda mixes something up the color of moss and smelling strongly of seaweed, and passes it off to Kristoff, who smears it on her nose and forehead and shoulders and laughs so hard he cries.


	6. A Ride

“Anna, I don’t think this is going to work.”

“Oh sure it is.”

Kristoff is hunched over a borrowed bicycle (she’d scrounged around and found one in a storage shed that is more or less his size – okay, more on the ‘less’ but it’ll do), his feet planted firmly on the paving stones of the castle courtyard, rear end hovering uncertainly over the triangle seat, fingers wrapped white knuckle tight over the handlebars, shoulders squared and tight. 

Anna chews on the inside of her cheek and tugs on one of her braids; if she laughs he’ll be off and gone before she can even say ‘country bike ride’, which is the whole point; it’s springtime, the snow is gone, he has the day off, they’re going on a ride.

Even though he has yet to try the pedals, he keeps giving her short little glances – quick furtive looks, as if he takes his concentration off the bike for more than a second it will do something unspeakable. (She bites a little harder.)

“This is not,” he says, experimentally easing himself on to the seat, “a reasonable form of transportation. There’s nothing even to sit on…”

“Don’t be silly. If you can ice-skate, you can keep your balance on a bike.”

“That’s not the same,” he mutters, resting a little firmer on the leather triangle, slowly lifting one foot off the ground.

“Here,” she says, stepping over and covering his hands with hers. “I’ll hold it steady; try putting your feet up.” She stands facing him, legs straddling the front wheel, braced against the handlebars and god it’s adorable, he is trying so hard: brows strung together in concentration, tongue between his teeth.

He gets both feet up, agonizingly slow, but it happens; the bike wobbles then steadies and he beams at her, a real grin.

“It’s not so bad now, is it?” She laughs, and leans forward to give him a kiss. Kristoff’s lips curl in, they’ve almost met, then – his eyes grow wide, and she realizes too late that leaning has put them off balance –

Uh oh.

Metal on stone makes an unholy clatter; her face is inches from the ground, skirts tangled in the gears, and Kristoff glares at her from under the rear tire.

“Oops.”


	7. Sleigh Ride

The wood is sleek, soft almost, and buffed so thoroughly that she can see her reflection. Black satin paint sets off the bronzy stain of the wood, and the white rosemaling detail on the hood is crisp and clean; it stands against the dark like snowflakes in candlelight, which is an apt sort of tribute, when you consider how they’d met.

“Can I try it out?” She asks the clerk, who is standing in the corner with crossed arms and watching with amused eyes as she prowls through his inventory. He nods, so she clambers in.

No cushion has been added to the seat, yet it’s still comfortable - the set of the backrest is neither too upright nor to reclined, but eased just enough that she can imagine Kristoff sitting there, one arm slung over her shoulders and the other holding the reigns, relaxed and smiling.

She closes her eyes, stretches out her feet (plenty of room there, good, good) and tries for a moment to remember how it felt to be sliding over snow, to feel invisible shards of ice pelting her cheeks and the smell of water and pine and burning oil from the lamp in her nose.

“We like to go fast,” he’d said, meaning, she thinks now, to scare her. It hadn’t worked at all clearly, because maybe Kristoff didn’t know then (but hopefully now) that she likes fast: on her bike, sliding down the banister, galloping her horse to make the stablemen gasp.

The thing about sleigh rides is not that it gets you from place to place, but the thrill, and to have the thrill you have to go faster than anything: you have lift your hands and stand, you have to take off your hat and let the air rush through your hair and ears so that your eyes water and sting, you have to imagine that you could leap up and take off like a bird because that is pretty much the closest thing to flying that she can imagine.

So, sure, it will haul ice and the paint will get scuffed and the back dirty and be all…business ice stuff. But hopefully Kristoff will like it too, because it’s a sled, and a fast one, and maybe, just maybe (because he pretends to be so practical but there’s magic and mischief in him too) they’ll go flying together.

She opens her eyes, turns to the clerk.

“I’ll take this one. And do you know where I can get a bow?”


	8. Freckles

It always seemed like a waste of time to be bothered by her freckles, given that they are everywhere. The story books from her childhood had heroines with snowy white skin and dark hair – she is pale, but with rather a lot of pink, and her hair? Well, dark and mysterious she certainly is not. For the first 18 years of her life, Anna considers herself an ordinary girl through and through.

She had that white streak though, which was interesting at least; when the spell was lifted and it melted away, she was surprised by the an unexpected pang of regret when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: that little bit of that magic gone, her troll kiss faded like a memory.

The freckles are still here, however, and she’s quick to find a new magic in them – perfectly unremarkable before, now they’re a map for Kristoff’s fingers, a trail by which he traces his mouth down her shoulders, up her thigh, across the plane of her stomach. He finds them in the crook of her elbow and the small of her back, on the lobe of her ear when it catches between his teeth.

He has them too – just a dusting across the bridge of his nose – which she is careful to kiss, one at a time: quickly when he laughs, other times slow and languid, her eyelashes brushing against his cheeks. She learns that they can be enchanting all on their own.

It’s not long at all before her freckles are her favorite feature.


	9. 2AM

On her nightstand is a small clock, the creamy face hardly bigger than an egg, set in a polished wooden house inlayed with bits of zinc, brass and turtle shell. Anna squints at it and reaches over to tilt it into the moonlight – 2AM.

Seems like as good a time as any, she thinks, swinging her feet to the floor and snagging her quilted house robe off the back of her vanity. The brass knob on her bedroom door is cool in her hand but not cold, and she dances a complicated little two-step down the hallway, feet mincing around the planks of wood that squeak and taking extra light steps past Elsa’s door. She’s honed this to an art; 2AM has been her acquaintance for many years.

The nice thing about the middle of the night is more than the thrill of maybe getting caught (because really, what would Kai do, except walk her back up to her room and roll his eyes?) or the idea that somehow the hour is forbidden and therefore mysterious. It’s the choosing to be awake: taking the time that’s hers and no one else’s.

Anna feels her way carefully around the sharp corners of the kitchen’s long counters and benches, shoves an apple in her pocket and continues along, hands hovering in the dark, feeling the outline of the cupboards and doorframe, and stone under her bare toes. There’s an awful lot of direction in the life of a princess, even the spare one: be here at this time, dress this way, say these things. Don’t offend. Conjugate your French properly and use the right fork.

She’s so glad that’s going to be Elsa’s job because come on, really. (It’s a fork. Who cares, moi?)

Behind the kitchen is a rose garden, and in one of the beds a sturdy lattice propped up in the mulch. Anna rests her hands lightly on one of the slats, considers for a second, deciding, then follows with both feet. It’s a game almost, to reach the kitchen roof – no disturbing the plants, or the cook will be after you (and that is NOT a lady to mess with), try not to get splinters in your feet, don’t sway, don’t fall – still, it doesn’t take more than a minute or two before she’s pulling herself up over the wood shingles.

From the kitchen roof it’s simple business to reach the castle’s upper spire. Keeping her eyes to the heavens, Anna tucks herself into a comfortable pocket of stone, pulls the apple out of her pocket, and after taking a bite, savors the tang as it spreads over her tongue and down her chin. Overhead, the sky is alight with streaks of green and purple, ribbons and laces flowing in the original Maypole dance; it’s 2AM, there’s no one to impress and she has the best seat in the house.


	10. Mistakes

“I didn’t know it would do that,” she says for probably the hundredth time, and raises one hand in front of her eyes: sticky, ew.

Elsa’s lips tighten fractionally, she’s still gripping the whisk and clutching the now empty mixing bowl, which drips batter onto the floor in disconsolate plops.

“You said you knew how to do this,” she says, lifting the bowl up and giving it a little shake.

“I did. I do. You just follow the recipe…” A particularly large glob chooses that moment to fall from the ceiling; it lands heavily in Elsa’s cream and silver hair, a pinkish stain spreading down over her forehead and onto her nose.

Anna winces.

Elsa raises her eyes to the heavens, and says, plaintively, and to no one in particular, “I am a Queen.” There’s a beat, then she levels her gaze at Anna.

When Elsa looks at her like that it’s almost scary; it’s eerily like the look their mother used to get whenever she caught them (okay, Anna) elbows deep in something she wasn’t supposed to be near. (Except now, in Elsa’s case, she has raspberry sludge in her eyebrows and it kinda ruins the effect.)

“Give me that please,” she says, and grabs the cookbook – heavy, pages transparent from years of being handled by butter greased fingers and oil, dusted in flour, practically a baked good itself – out of Anna’s hands, bobbles it for a second, then flips back to the appropriate page.

“Okay, so, eggs, flour, sugar, salt, beet juice, berries, baking soda, vinegar – ”

“Wait, what?”

Anna looks at Elsa who looks at the cookbook.

She lifts the page, rubs the paper between her fingers, and sighs deeply when two leaves separate, falling gently back into place.

“Soooo what were we making?”

“Cake…pickles.”

“This might be harder than I expected.”


	11. A Sister Thing

They share a dressing room now, a large one with a long vanity and big windows and dress forms that stand in the corner, and delicate curved hooks for their shoes on the inside of the closet doors.

“You don’t think this is a bit little overkill?” Elsa asks when she moves her things in, arms full of wool and cotton, trailing socks and underthings across the floor.

“I do not,” Anna says brightly, dumping the latest handful into a heap with the rest. “This is how it was supposed to be the whole time – proper princesses with their ladies in waiting, you know.”

“Really.”

“Nah,” Anna says, spreading open the heavy double doors and sticking her head into the closet. “But you do have much better taste in dresses.”


	12. Romeo and Juliet

The gardens are her favorite part of the castle, and she finds herself laying on one of the benches after dinner twirling a twig between her fingers and half listening to the murmur of people wafting out the drawing room window. There’s moonlight and the summer air is thick and heavy with the smell of gardenia and roses; it’s like a play, she thinks, half waiting for a recitation to break the stillness.

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?

Romeo doesn’t appear, but a shadow covers her face and she looks up to see Kristoff smiling down at her.

“Hey,” he says, and gestures for her to scoot over, which she does. “What’re you doing out here?”

“Oh, nothing – just thinking.”

Thinking about you, she’d like to say, but doesn’t.

They sit hip to hip, touching shoulders, pleasant and tingly and Anna is suddenly much warmer.

“I had an interesting day,” Kristoff says finally, when the silence becomes too heavy. “I took the sled out with Sven – it’s great – we like, I mean I really like, how easy it is to take the wheels off. And the cupholder – ” he glances down at her and grins. “It’s nice too.”

“I’m glad you like it.”

“I do.”

They lapse into another draft of silence, Kristoff idly kicking his feet against the ground, arm casually wrapped around her waist, and Anna playing with her twig.

A breeze drifts around them, carrying the aroma of earth and ocean air and flowers, lifting the heaviness of the gardenias, sweet and soft.

A night for sweethearts.

Familiar.

Oh no.

(She learned her lesson with Hans.)

Learned it so well that even though she enjoyed kissing Kristoff very much (dockside, sun in her hair), now, in this garden, with him nudging a little closer, blonde hair falling in his face, even though she wants (oh and she does), as his hand comes around her back and their lips are so close – she jerks back, heart beating staccato; wrong, wrong, wrong.

Kristoff rears up, face all alarm and concern.

“I’m so sorry; is something wrong? Did I do something? Are you okay?”

“OH. No. No, you didn’t. It’s fine. You’re fine. I’m fine.”

She flashes a smile at him, wills her nerves to quiet, tries to sound natural.

She can tell by how his eyebrows twitch together that it’s not entirely convincing.

“Anna, do you not want me to kiss you?”

Her mouth opens, closes, opens – (yes I do but I don’t know how to tell you).

“Because that’s fine,” he continues, “if you’d rather we didn’t we don’t have to, now, or ever, you just…have to tell me.”

(It’s rising now, the whatever trapped in her ribs, bubbling up, up, up; this is when she says something really dumb or starts to cry, oh NO.)

“A kiss is a message too intimate for the ear,” she blurts.

“What?”

Anna flaps her hands, claps them over her mouth, then buries her face in them. “It’s from a book,” she says, voice muffled. (If she could die of embarrassment right here, now, that’d be fine.)

She can feel his fingers on hers, cool and firm, gently pulling them away from her face until she’s staring right into his eyes, big and bright in the dark.

“What are we?” she whispers.

(What does a kiss mean? What are you to me?)

Kristoff sits back, holding their hands together between them, and considers.

“I think we can be whatever we want,” he says after a few minutes, shrugging. “Does it have to have a name?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“Why should it?” He shrugs again. “I like this. Do you?”

She pauses, gives his hand a little squeeze, and thinks.

So it’s a garden, and evening, and there’s a moon overhead and the sound of water.

This is not Romeo: dashing and svelte and charming, sweeping her off her feet and leaving her to die.

It’s Kristoff.

Kristoff who is not saying anything at all, but waiting: patient, solid, kind.

(How did the rest of that go?)

A way of breathing in a little of the heart.

“I do like it,” she says finally.

“Okay then.” He gives her a small smile and a half hug, and now, tucked together under the boughs of the Yew tree, watching the moon rise, Anna realizes that the silence isn’t heavy at all.

Time for Act Two.


	13. Redecorating

“I think I would like to learn to paint,” she announces one cold and rainy day in February. She’s examining one of the portraits in the study, old and faded and greying; the oils are dried and chipping in one of the corners.

The subject is a distant relative, she supposes (why else would they have his picture here), expression dour and gloomy under a large handlebar moustache. (It’s grey too.)

Elsa and Kristoff look up from their game of chess, their faces an identical mixture of skepticism and wariness.

“To paint?” Elsa says carefully, and moves her bishop. “You’re in check, by the way.”

“Yes. You need new paintings.”

Elsa raises her eyebrows, and rests her chin in her hand, fingers tapping in thought. “You want to replace the ones in here.”

“Exactly.”

“And why?”

Anna turns around again, and takes in the room: fire crackling, a stack of books teetering on an armchair, Kristoff slouching lazily over the chessboard, and Elsa, prim as always, but with feet curled under her in the chair and hair down – relaxed, happy.

(She could do wonders with this in oils.)

“Because this room needs some cheer - not some grumpy old man staring at you,” she answers. “Wouldn’t it be nice to see you smiling all the time?”

Elsa’s jaw drops. Across the table, Kristoff sits up straight, moves a knight, and fist-pumps the air.

“Ha! Checkmate!”


	14. Seasons

Autumn

It comes as no surprise to anyone that of the three, Kristoff is the best at carving pumpkins.

“Watch your fingers,” he warns, when she asks to use his belt knife. The tang in her hand is slippery and smooth with pumpkin pulp and turnip seeds; the table itself a mess of vegetable innards and chunks of rind.

Anna’s pumpkin glares at her, winking one-eyed and grotesque, the blade deep in the socket of the mouth. “Boo to you too,” she says, and sticks her tongue out at it.

“You know,” says Kristoff, stepping back a bit and cocking his head, “that is the spitting image of one of my cousins.”

(Across the scrubbed table, Elsa chokes on her tea.)

*

Winter

Snow comes, fast and strong, sooner than they all thought would happen; the fires are stoked, wood chopped, soup made, and while Anna strings the castle with holly berries and branches, Elsa draws snowflakes onto the window panes and hangs them from chandeliers – glittering and beautiful and unmelting.

It’s their first Yuletide together, and there’s an unspoken agreement that it will be bigger and better and more everything – all the things Anna had always wanted from a holiday, all the things she remembers from her childhood.

She has memories buried but not forgotten, everything from wearing a wreath of candles and mistletoe on Saint Lucy’s day (when the veil is thin and magic close, and trolls come alive and wander the longest night of the year) to the sound of a Hardanger fiddle, keening low around the fire on Christmas Eve.

On Christmas morning, Elsa surprises her with hot rice pudding and gingerbread, and Anna knows she’s remembering too.

*

Spring

Anna wakes up one morning and finds the world below her bedroom window is coming to life. The very best thing, she thinks, clutching at her robe, nose pressed up against the glass, about having this bedroom, is the view; overnight the gardens below have shed the vestiges of winter and are erupting in spring color.

Beds of earth covered in a dusting of late snow and frost wake in the morning sunshine, fragile stems that have spent that last week peeking out of the mulch and dirt, feeling the air, waiting –

She’s been waiting too, checking every morning for blossoms and the tell-tale scent of nectar and honey; the perfume of tulips, daffodils, hyacinth, snow drops, and Lily of the valley.

It’s here.

*

Summer

“I can’t believe you don’t know how to swim,” Kristoff remarks, again, and the grip on her elbow tightens a little as she bounces, experimentally, to see how long it takes before her toes come down again. “Now try kicking like I showed you.”

“When was I going to learn?” She asks, and obediently flutters her feet, making the water froth.

“I figured it would be a pretty normal thing, since you live so close to the water.”

“Nope.”

He turns her on her back, hands resting just barely under her shoulders and hips. Anna blinks lake water out of her eyes and smiles at him; he’d been so concerned when he found out she’d never been swimming, paced around the kitchen and made a lot of strange noises and said things about responsibility, and it had all been very cute and now they’re here, waist deep in a mountain lake, all alone.

“I’m going to let you go,” he warns, and with one hand brushes damp hair out of his eyes. “Keep your head back and your hips up, and you’ll float.” The warmth under her back evaporates when he lets her go, but oh.

Cradled by water, rocked like a lullaby, the echo of water under her ears and blue sky above – she sighs deeply, instinctively draws her legs up and in, curls around the water….

And sinks like a stone.

(Kristoff just laughs at her when she stands, spitting water everywhere, claps her on the back, and when she has her breath, they try again. And again. And again.)


	15. Nothing

She worries for weeks ahead of time, right from the moment Elsa pulls her into her office and asks her to sit down, to morning when her feet move off the rocking, rolling planks of the ship and onto unfamiliar soil.

A diplomatic mission, they’d said, it couldn’t be avoided – this is part of being royal, sometimes doing things you don’t like, because your country needs it.

Still.

The Southern Isles are bright, she thinks, shielding her face under a light blue parasol and hitching up her skirts as the convoy makes their way off the gangplank. Too bright, like the sun is closer and less friendly, the air humid and muggy now that they’re away from the breeze of the sea.

They put it off for fifteen years. Maybe longer than necessary – or maybe not, Anna hasn’t made up her mind – but some things you just can’t avoid forever.

Fifteen years. Long enough to grow up. Have a family. Become important to your country, more than anyone expected of the second sister, the spare. Anna scowls against the sun. Old insecurities for an old time, long past.

(She’s prepared to hate the whole business, morning to night, but it turns out that she’s too busy.)

What surprises her most is how, finally, after two weeks of meetings and compromises and examining trade manifests and shaking hands with every lorded person in the whole place – they don’t meet except by accident.

The evening before they are scheduled to leave, Anna excuses herself from dinner, turns a corner toward the suit of rooms afforded the Arendellian delegation, and almost runs straight into him: Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, live and in the flesh.

That face. The angles are still sharp, a nose that could cut if you looked at it wrong, those ridiculous sideburns, the beginnings of wrinkles around the eyes, a slightly fuller waist.

Fifteen years and two weeks after being left for dead in a room cold as ice, after the Thaw, after marriages and babies and travel and a life – his green eyes widen in shock, and she smiles, all teeth and glee, because looking at him she realizes she feels nothing, nothing at all.


End file.
